Company Policies That Negatively Impact Employee Engagement

Company Policies That Negatively Impact Employee Engagement

Picture this: Your best sale’s executive, David enters your cabin and submit his resignation. I am leaving Mark! When asking about the reasons for quitting the job, he simply said, “ I didn’t like work environment here.” Mark takes some time to believe that David is leaving. How will the team achieve quarterly sales target without him?

It is disheartening to see how a traditional, old-fashioned, command- and- control relationship between employer and employees has smashed business growth and development. In my previous post, I told you ways to strengthen the employee-employer relationship. Now I will explain what are those schizophrenic office directives that can hinder employee engagement and curtail company’s growth.

Miserable policies for attendance, leaves, and time off

Salaried people don’t need attendance policies. This is the reason why they are in company’s payroll. If you are still bothering people for getting to work ten minutes late when they generally stay an hour late every day to complete file, you don’t deserve them on your team.

Forced rankings of performance

Performance evaluations are usually broken, bureaucratic waste of time. It is sad that many managers micromanage their employees that create a high-stress work environment. Most of the companies are still using the bell-curve performance appraisal system for mapping the performance of employees. It is an outdated system and not an ideal outlook of appraisal.

Stress on Dress

Many companies have some questionable dress code rules that annoy employees. At a workplace, your attitude counts, not your nail paint or short-sleeve tops. Stop these insultingly detailed dress code policy and remind employees to dress soberly for business.

Banning mobile phones

Do you believe if you allow mobile phones in the office, employees will waste time texting and talking to family and friends? It’s true to some extent. Organizations need to understand that banning mobiles would help. It can demoralize hard-working employees who need to check their phone due to personal commitments or health issues. They need to train managers to deal with employees who are not meeting work expectations due to spending too much time on their phones.

Stupid approvals for everything

We usually expect approval from higher management while hiring someone or spending a lot of money on some project. Do you need your manager’s written approval to change your seat when you are not able to concentrate on your work because of noise made in your office? Getting approval for changing seat? Oh, really? Remember more workplace bureaucracy will slow down the work.

Stealing employees’ frequent-flyer miles

Several large companies steal their employees’ hard-earned frequent flier miles to save against future flights. Isn’t it look boorish? Ideally, the frequent flyer miles belong to employees who travel, not your employer. Work travel is a major sacrifice of time, energy on employee’s side. Grabbing employees’ miles shows that you don’t recognize their sacrifice and you are ready to save every dollar at their expense.

Less Internal communication

The best way to boost effective internal communication in office is to promote –team –building activities. Cross-functional teams and collaboration events can improve communication skills among peers.

Strict email policy

Some companies are very particular about their email policy. They have a list of pre-approved topics on which employees send and receive messages. Like it or not, email is a primary communication tool. Employees need freedom and trust to do their job. In trying to keep a tab on an unproductive employee, you make everyone miserable every time they send an e-mail. If you don’t trust your people why do you hire them at first place?

Bringing it all together

Employees who are still following old policies in place will keep driving their best people away till they establish a connection between policies, passion, employee engagement, performance, and profits. Ironically, businesses do not question the validity of their policies over the years to see if they are still relevant. More unrealistic policies lead to less passion for teamwork. Less passion generates less employee engagement and poor performance. The less performance lowers your profit.

If you are not a manager, that doesn’t mean you have to stay silent and complain to your dog about the stupid rules at work. You can speak up about that Scrooge-y policy in meeting or directly with your manager. You need to guidelines and communication tools to ensure that policies are fair, equally applied to everyone.